Swearing on His Scars
by butimnotdeadyet
Summary: Sara sees Mick do something that she can't quite understand and asks for an explanation. She gets one, and learns a little bit about her two favorite rogues, too. Mostly Sara and Mick being bros, but then some Captain Canary stuff, too.
**Disclaimer: Still don't own DC's LOT, just borrowing.**

Usually, stopping in anywhere in a ten year gap around 2016 would mean that the team was up and about, looking for something familiar in the whatever city was hosting them. And 2020 London was no different. After landing on a rooftop in the banking district, the team had gone their separate ways to spend one of their priceless days off doing whatever they wanted.

Hours later, as Sara made her way back to the suite they had rented to act as an in-city headquarters, she eyed the crowds, occasionally playing the tourist and snapping a few pictures with an era-approved camera. Nothing too interesting, just proof to wave in Sin and Thea's unbelieving faces. Their response to the pictures of her and Jax parkouring over the Berlin Wall that she'd displayed on her last trip home had been fantastic. But something else pulled her interest. The crowd was parting ahead of her and she could just make out a tall, dark skinned, and serious looking man stride purposefully onto the street away from their complex, followed by an as-of-yet unnoticed Mick Rory half a dozen steps behind him.

The tail was obvious. Mick wasn't even trying to hide his trajectory, or the fury that radiated from his (now) typically stoic body, each step pounding with anger. Even when Sara quickened her pace to close the block's worth of distance between her and the pair, boots silent on the pavement, she could only watch as Mick clapped a hand on the shorter -but only slightly- man's shoulder and spun him around. She could see him bark something, a question, in the stranger's face and when the latter didn't respond, he pulled his right arm back and snapped it forward again to land an unhindered blow to the other man's face.

The people around them had turned when he first walked up, but now they were scattering. He didn't care. Mick turned instride, straightening his displaced jacket as he walked back into the building he had just left, the other man left kneeling on the stones outside, bleeding profusely from his mouth and nose. Sara was by his side before he could press the button for the elevator.

He knew she would ask as soon as he felt her beside him. Blondie never could leave well enough alone when it came to the more roguish members of their team. He had seen her coming from one of the entrance's windows as he followed Drake- he couldn't even think the name with bile rising in his throat, despite the fact that he blood pressure was returning to a more acceptable range- outside. Knowing that any other crewmate would see would have stopped him in his tracks, but out of all of them, Sara had the least judgment to offer. Not to mention that he was certain she would have stabbed the bastard in the pews of her childhood church if she knew why he had done it.

"What was that, Rory? It's not even dinner time and you're already making friends?"

She said it lightly, with a ghost of joke like she did when she knew that answer would be anything but. The elevator pinged and they stepped inside together, Mick letting his eyes slide to the side to meet hers as the doors closed again.

"Did that look friendly to you, girl? I guess I need to get back to the gym." He grumbled before looking forward again, watching the digital readout bounce upward, floor to floor. Ten more to go.

"You better tell me what that was about, Mick, or I'll be sure to tell Leonard that it was you that spilled hot tea on his parka." Six to go and he could ignore this situation for at least another few hours.

"We both know that was Stein. PLus, it was the cream that left the stain and he knows I only drink it with lemon." Four. Just a few more seconds. Or there were until she slammed a firm hand against the control panel and the box stopped halfway between 12 and 13, letting out a shrill alarm.

"You better tell me what that was. You have been next in line for the title of 'Captain Cold' for the past two months, then all of a sudden you're shattering some civilians nose on the streets of southern London? Explain." She turned her whole body to face him, back straight and eyes hard, one hand still holding down whatever she had pressed while the other found a perch on her hip. Still half a foot shorter than him in her boots, but stubbornly determined. Mick growled before relenting, stretching his right hand as he spoke.

"First, he was about as 'civilian' as you and me. Second, he had it coming. For years." Sara cocked a questioning eyebrow. "And, no, not just because we're in '20." She waved him on with a quick nod.

"Dammit, Blondie, fine. He was a crook, ran in the same circles as Snart and I in the the early 2000s, bumped back and forth between Europe and the States every few years. What you just witnessed," he jerked his elbow back in the direction of the street, "was our first ever face-to-face."

"Oh, so it's not how you make friends, it's how you greet acquaintances. Remind me never to introduce you to my friends."

Mick let out a tightlipped smile, entertained by how much she sounded like Snart when he knew Mick skirting a topic.

"Not all acquaintances, Lance, just the one that left my partner to die in a dark alley."

Sara stiffened, searching his features for some hint of a doubling meaning. But green eyes tell no lies, and Mick's were no exception.

"What happened? When?" She knew he would answer. He wouldn't have brought it up if he wasn't prepared to follow through, but she kept her hand on the control switch, ensuring that they would both stay put until she was brought up to speed. Mick sighed and settled against the bronze colored panelling.

"Well, whatever you do, this, any of it, doesn't get mentioned to Len. Swear it." He paused, waiting for the nod Sara provided a moment later, resolution settling on her face. "His name is Drake Corner, or Corner Drake, something like that. Like I said, he moved back and forth and kept just enough ties in the States to fence whatever he get next, which is why he and I never crossed paths.

"He and Snart worked a team up in Coast City in 2005. Heist went off without a hitch and they decided to do it again, this time in Prague, I think. That carried on for seven months, give or take. Pretty soon they were on job eight, back in the States, Chicago, maybe, and them and their recruits were about a seemless of a team of crooks you'd ever see."

Sara interrupted, "Where were you, then?"

"Prison; stint for arson, and not the point. It was a pretty standard thing, Snart pulling together a team when he and I were on the outs." Sara shrugged and asked him to continue.

"Anyway, they go in with a plan to jack some fingerpainting with a hefty price tag, come out through a building next door. Executing everything perfect, because, come on, this is Snart we're talking about, and Len's standing there on the second floor fire escape waiting for Drake to crawl through the window when he hears a gun cock. Turns around and Drake shoots him in the chest three times from about ten feet back, and shoves him over the railing.

"Snart swear he's only alive because of the homeless guy's house he landed on and the fact that the cops were already on scene because to the building's alarm system and the paramedics were only a few streets over. One of the rounds when straight through his ribs and tore the shit out of his left lung a few inches from his heart, another was all meat- hit his arm square, and the third hit the pick set he had moved from his belt to jacket his pocket when they changed out of their street clothes. He said it was a damn good thing that Drake hadn't been the marksman of the pair. I saw him a week or two later when he was carted into Iron Heights, all busted up, after they finally figured out which outstanding warrants were still viable. To this day I don't think I've seen him look that pissed at, or that hurt by, anyone."

"I don't know, Chronos, I think you may have won that title." Sara said with a wink.

Mick let out a rough hmmf, scoffing at the reminder. "Not exactly the kind of hurt that I meant, Blondie. Though, for number of scars gained in a single night, I would guess it was up there with the time he thought he could lose a bloodhound by hopping a barbed wire fence." He watched as Sara's eyes tightened in confusion, another eerily Snart trait she had picked up, and he sighed.

"Look. Len hates being wrong, about anything, but especially people. Hates thinking that someone is better than they are and finding out that he is so wrong. So, imagine what it was like when he found out that someone he thought cared never did. That someone he cared for would do that, betray everything they had done for a lump sum not that much greater than their usual. He did what he does; responded by freezing out everyone who wouldn't fight to stay in his good graces. Ever wonder why, Lisa and me are the only one's he gave two shits about before this team? It's because he forced everyone else -the other crews he trusted, the crooks he'd trained, prison mates- out. Even Lisa and I get the ax every once in awhile, but that's more because of him getting tired of having to save our floundering asses."

"So, if one of us were to ever pump Len full of lead, you'd pop up almost twenty years later in a different country to slug whoever it was in the mouth. Good to know."

"I don't think the rest of the team fits to criteria, Lance," Mick provided smoothly, "just you."

Her brow furrowed deeper and the arsonist rolled his eyes.

"Lance. Am I gonna have to force feed this to you? They weren't just 'me and Snart' type partners."

The sentence hung in the air for a second before Sara's eyes widened. There, now she got it. Her mouth popped with a silent 'oh'.

"'Oh', is right, Bird. Needless to say, that part of 'them' evaporated around the same time that Snart smacked the asphalt." He reached forward and dragged her limp hand off the switch before inverting it and feeling the elevator shudder back to life and continued its ascent. "You leave my partner bleeding out in a Chi-town alley and you can bet your leather clad ass I'll leave you in worse shape than wheezing on your knees in a foreign courtyard if I ever get the chance."

Sara was quiet until they reached their floor. "He's never mentioned a Drake before, work or . . . otherwise. A Charr and a Rossei, yeah, but not him." She glanced back at Mick as they walked into the hallway, briefly meeting his eyes.

"You know that we -Leonard and I- aren't that, right?" Mick laughed at her tone, it having landed somewhere between uncertainty and honesty.

"It wasn't the relationship that did the damage, Blondie. It was the feelings. And no one's dense enough to miss that there are plenty of those flying around, not when you and Snart play your little card games, or argue about who's the better pickpocket, or when the two of you somehow manage end up half naked while sparing, or after you getting each other shit-faced and pass out on the couch trying watching that damn movie again-"

"Whatever, Mick." She said with a sigh.

He smiled wholeheartedly, knowing that he'd put her on edge with his lists of observations. They had come to a standstill outside of the apartment and Sara pushed open the door, scanning the entry to make sure they were alone before unloading her bag on the table.

"Why was he here? Outside. I'm guessing it wasn't a coincidence."

Mick had sat in one of the upholstered desk chairs by the room's bay window, getting comfortable before answering.

"Smart girl. No it wasn't. He caught sight on Len when we were walking around looking for a breakfast joint. Bad part about having a partner who already looks half decade younger than he is, and being another six years in the future, meant he still looks basically the same as he did in '05, nearly indisputable. Only recognized Drake off what I remembered from warrants when I noticed Snart tense up and I connected the dots. He didn't approach, but I wanted to kick his ass then and there. Len did, too, had his hand on the grip of the cold gun before I even knew for sure. But Rip had been very particular about recognition this time around so we tried to play it off. We got out, made it back here for a while before Snart got antsy and had to take walk- not that I blame him.

"The guy showed up not ten minutes later. Told him to crawl back into whatever hole he'd disappeared into back then and that I'd kill him if he ever came back." His eyes flitted out the window and she knew that he had meant it. "He made some comment about making amends 'after all these years' and tried to feed me some line about not knowing the whole story, but doubled back when told him I didn't give a shit about his story, instead making noise about me wanting Snart to myself- son of a bitch didn't even piece together who I was.

"I escorted him out, took the stairs so that I wouldn't scar any young, English ears that might be hanging around, may have shoved him down a few of the lower flights. And I was going to leave it at that. Until he said that he knew Len 'still loved' him, wanted him, how he'd 'seen it' on the street and then he walked out, chin high, like he left with the final say." He leaned forward hands clasped and elbows braced on his knees, head dropping a little lower than it had, but he met Sara's eye firmly.

"And I couldn't let him. Couldn't let him just walk away after watching all the shit that he made Snart go through. You know, Lance, out of all the scars he has, he hates the ones from that night the most. The ones his dad gave him, other jobs, accidents, they don't even compare. All because that bastard convinced him, somewhere deep down, that he deserved them. Needed them as punishment for trusting, having faith. Loving." He spat the last word and Sara could see the fury from before resurfacing, could see his hand tensing at the memory of his fist knocking against cartilage and teeth. "So, I followed him out, asked him if he knew. If he knew what he had done to a man that had loved him. He didn't. I could see it. He didn't know and he didn't care. Len had been a commodity that he wanted: savant level skill, genius level intellect, and fuckable to boot.

"I wish to God, or to whoever, actually, that I had hit him again. Maybe giving him a few scars, but then there wouldn't be a chance that Snart didn't find out. So, once had to be enough."

He was looking at his hand now, wondering if it really was enough, Sara guessed, but what was drawing her attention more was that his eyes, usually a cross between murderous, calculating, and manic, were now foggy. She shifted, moving off the couch arm she'd been leaning against and stepping forward to lay her hand on his wrist, pulling him up before looping her arms around his torso, hugging him firmly. Mick reciprocated, though he wasn't particularly sure why.

"You know," Sara started, setting her chin on his chest to look up at him with a grin, "I almost wish I hadn't sworn not to tell, because now there is no way I can explain to him, ever, why you just may be my favorite person without sounding like I lost a bet and the grand prize was my unwavering loyalty."

He chuckled in response, though it sounded a little wet to Sara's trained ears.

"Someone besides me should know, anyway."

"Yeah, probably, considering that you keep fight feelings with fists."

Mick gripped her upper arms gently, pushing her back enough that her arms dropped and he could look her dead in her earnest eyes. "Lance, I was serious about what I said before. It could be you on the pavement out there next time, if you're not careful. And it won't be twenty years later. I won't make that mistake again."

Sara nodded, bracing herself against his glare before adding, "I don't think that will be a problem, Mick. There's no way that I could walk away from him without receiving any fewer scars than I would leave behind."

He held the stare a moment longer before nodding, accepting her response as binding law, and drawing her in again, enjoying the shared load of what it is to love a Snart.

Later that evening, an alert was pushed out to the public to be aware that an attacker, woman in white, was at large and her lone victim was now being treated for several broken bones and severe contusions at an area hospital.

Rip was fuming, but Sara swore the man had had it coming.

 **A/N:**

 **I have been watching a whole lot of Prison Break and Burrows-Scofield feels are completely to blame for all of this mess.**

 **I love protective Mick, even if 98% of it is fantasy. And he talks a lot, which is almost enough canon divergence in itself to make this an AU, but I won't give up hope.**

 **Reviews are appreciated!**


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